Evidence strength
Relevant metrics: Acquisition, Activation, Customer feedback, Cost
Validates: Feasibility, Viability, Desirability
How: Provide the core features of your intended final product, but limit its scope (and scale) to support only a small subset of the final market.
Why: Costs associated with a product are often not in developing its basic functionality, but in scaling it to support and make it useful for a large number of users.
This experiment is part of the Validation Patterns printed card deck
A collection of 60 product experiments that will validate your idea in a matter of days, not months. They are regularly used by product builders at companies like Google, Facebook, Dropbox, and Amazon.
Get your deck!Before the experiment
The first thing to do when planning any kind of test or experiment, is to figure out what you want to test. To make critical assumptions explicit, fill out an experiment sheet as you prepare your test. We created a sample sheet for you to get started. Download the Experiment Sheet.
After the experiment
To make sure you move forward, it is a good idea to systematically record your the insights you learned and what actions or decisions follow. We created a sample Learning Sheet, that will help you capture insights in the process of turning your product ideas successful. Download the Learning Sheet.
Examples
Place to eat
If you want to build an app that helps users find the best place to eat, only build up its database for a specific city or country before scaling it to worldwide use. Valid learning can come from running marketing and testing efforts locally before scaling it globally.
Related plays
- Pretotype It by Alberto Savoia
- Pretotyping Techniques for Building the Right Product by Alberto Savoia